Page 64 from: Recycling International May/June issue
64
we easily did 13 000 cars but, unfor-
tunately, too many are being illegally
shipped across Austrian and EU bor-
ders,’ she explains.
DIVERSE STREAMS
Ragg Recycling also handles electric
motors and all kinds of industrial and
construction scrap. Mussmann and
her team are also seeing an emerging
business from other commodities,
including wood.
As well as the main facility in Hall,
Ragg has three other sites nearby,
one of which is in Innsbruck and its
main activity is copper cable recy-
cling. The company has a workforce
of more than 100 and most employ-
ees, some educated at the regional
school of technical engineering, have
been local all their lives.
The business itself, too, has a strong
regional approach as scrap is pre-
dominantly collected within the bor-
ders of Tyrol. Processed materials
mostly go to regional customers
including a smelter opposite Ragg’s
main yard. Materials are also sent to
steelmakers in northern Italy and
Germany ‘but that’s about the fur-
thest we go,’ Mussmann stresses.
HIGHER QUALITY
In recent years, the Austrian recycler
has been busy keeping its operations
up to date, driven by new and ever-
strict EU and local regulation as well
as growing demand for higher quality
scrap material.
Innovation and investments in mod-
ern tools and equipment have always
been part of the company DNA. In
2020, at the height of the coronavirus
pandemic, Ragg installed a new
shear, followed four years later by a
replacement of its mega shredder –
one of six in the Alpine country.
The previous shredder, with the
capacity to process 25 tonnes of fer-
rous scrap per hour, dated from 1987
and was modernised in 2004. ‘The
time had come to invest in a com-
pletely new plant,’ says Mussmann.
MISSION ‘NEW SHREDDER’
It took eight months, smart technolo-
gy and, above all, dedicated team
effort to tear down Ragg’s old shred-
der and build a new, modern shred-
ding line from scratch on the same
location. ‘A challenging and exciting
exercise,’ summarises Ragg’s shred-
der plant project manager Clemens
Gritsch. ‘As you can imagine, there
was a lot of preparation to make all
pieces of the puzzle fit. There are so
many people and disciplines involved
in such project and it all has to come
together at some point.’
After the old shredder had been dis-
mantled, including the concrete foun-
dations, pipes, electric cables etc, the
new shredder plant was built from the
ground up. ‘A completely new foun-
dation was made, strong enough to
support the heavy shredder,’ Gritsch
explains. ‘Some 1 200 cubic metres of
concrete was poured in, six metres
deep in the ground.’
TRINITY DELIVERS
For the construction of the new facili-
ty, a strong collaboration was estab-
lished between Lindemann, Lybover
and ILG International.
Lindemann designed and built the
feed conveyor and shredder and,
additionally, handled the entire elec-
trical control system. Belgium’s tech-
nology provider Lybover built the
downstream line to clean the shred-
ded material, and also installed an
extraction system on the shredder,
including a smart filter to ensure
emission limits are met.
Germany’s noise protection and job
safety specialist ILG International con-
structed the soundproofed enclosure
around the installation, made with
350 tonnes of steel pillars and plates.
The enclosure features, among other
things, pressure release valves. These
ensure that in the event of an explo-
sion in the shredder, pressure is eased
without damaging the housing.
SCRAP PILED UP
Machinery installation projects often
witness setbacks on the way and
Ragg’s new shredder was no excep-
tion. ‘But nothing dramatic,’ notes
project manager Gritsch. ‘On the day
Lindemann had planned to ship all
the shredder components from its
premises is Westfalia to Austria, major
river flooding prevented trucks taking
the route south so shipment had to
be postponed for one day.’
A challenge of a different kind: while
the old shredder was being disman-
On average between 3 000 and 4 000 end-of life vehicles per
year go through Ragg’s shredder.
Ragg’s shredder operator Jürgen Unterstöger.
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